Seesters Go To San Francisco

SUMMARY: Almost Wordless Wednesday

There are five sisters. Three went to San Francisco to see Says You! live.

Heavy drinkers: Water, lemonade, raspberry lemonade, and hot chocolate chasers.

Who's the photo bomber?

At the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco theater.

It's San Francisco: Arrive in the sun, leave in the fog.

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Nature vs Nurture plus Evil Floors

SUMMARY: Who's her daddy?

If you haven't already read this short article about nature vs. nurture in dogs (USDAA posted it in its news feed), you should. It's easily read and has nice diagrams. It clearly describes how both nature and nurture affect a dog's behavior, but that even the best nurturing can't overcome genetic flaws in behavior (and, vice versa, the worst nurturing can't completely overcome genetic strengths).

It's All in How They're Raised (not)

Here's my response:

Thanks for this article; just read in in the USDAA news. I particularly liked it because it followed a discussion with a friend about human children. I commented that she'd done a great job raising her kids, and she said that, no, she was just lucky. I said that I believed it's a combination of nature and nurture, and she said it's almost all nature, because she's seen good kids in bad situations and vice versa. Your article captures the answer to our discussion quite nicely. Thanks.

My border collie (Boost) abruptly developed a fear of unfamiliar flooring (especially if it was smooth, although it could be the exact flooring that I have in my house, just in a different building) when she was maybe 3 or 4. She'd always been concerned about changes to her environment, but this stunned me, because it also included floors in houses in which we had previously spent many days during her life or even weekends visiting. This manifested with the toes splayed out, the legs splayed out, hunkering down for a low center of gravity, and preferably hugging the walls and furniture as if somehow that made the floors safer. Fast forward to when she's 8 years old--still does it, although not quite as much and she can get used to the floors given time and patience. Talking to her breeder one day about border collies in general and reactivity, and I mentioned the floors thing. He said, oh, yes, her father did that his whole life, on *all* smooth floors, even in his own house--hugging the walls, toes spread out. Funny thing is that in looks and attitude, she's so much like her mother (whom floors never bothered).

Previous posts about Evil Floors (some with photos):

• Evil Floors 
• Vicon weekend in Point Arena (scroll down to Evil Floor Syndrome)
• Evil Floors and Working Dogs
• Evil Devil Floors (the very beginning)

Started Another Blog plus History of Martial Cottle Park

SUMMARY: Martial Cottle Park Naughty Neighbor Patrol.

Sooooooo I haven't been posting here much. Maybe blame it on Facebook (where I do post pithy pointless sayings and photos), or blame it on not doing much in the way of dog sports or dog training, or whatever.

Meanwhile, a new, nearly 300-acre park opened its perimeter trail right behind my house. We've been waiting for this for many, many years, and the neighborhood loves it, based on how many people I see out on the trail at all times of the day. This, in an area where going for walks at any time of the day usually found the sidewalks deserted.

No landscaping yet, and the west side near me will mostly be agricultural land, but it's still nice to go walking.

A little history: The Cottle family moved to the San Jose area in the mid-1800s. San Jose was next to nothing until the gold rush, when the whole valley began providing food for the booming San Francisco and the mining towns in the Sierras. This is really where money was to be made! The Santa Clara valley is amazingly fertile, and over time, agriculture spread across the valley, with plum and cherry trees in particular, so that in the spring, the whole valley bloomed. It became known as The Valley of Heart's Delight. (Now it's Silicon Valley. Which do you prefer? Discuss.)

Martial Cottle, born in 1833 in Missouri, came here with his family when he was 21. They were fairly affluent to begin with, bringing 600 head of cattle with them.  They bought and married into--I think--several square miles of the the valley.  When his father died, Martial ended up with hundreds of acres, but on this 350-acre parcel he lived, built a Victorian farmhouse (still there), and raised wheat, cattle, and orchards.

His five children were born in the house, including Ethel (1891-1977). Ethel married and had two children, also born in that house, Walter Cottle Lester (b. 1925) and Edith Lester. Walter (and possibly Edith?) lived in that farmhouse their entire lives. Ethel started the idea, as she watched the valley change around her, from agriculture to suburbs and business parks, of preserving the site as a reminder of the valley's agricultural roots. After Ethel died, Walter talked with various governments for probably two decades--not trusting government and not liking what they wanted to offer--before an agreement began to unfold with the state or the county (not the city--some bad feelings there of some sort).

And then Edith died. Leaving Walter with an enormous inheritance tax: Developers had reportedly offered him up to half a *billion* dollars ($500,000,000) for the property.  Eventually, after more negotiations, the state, which had a bit more money at the time, bought half the property, allowing him to pay the taxes, and he donated the rest to the County of Santa Clara, along with a deed that covered BOTH parts of the property as one park and stating explicitly how the park could and could not be used (this is often referred to as "the donor's vision," but it is, in fact, a legal document).

Part of the agreement was that he could continue to live on the property in the same house, along with his barns and orchards and smaller fields, in the Life Estate part of the park, until he died.  So no development or planning could occur in the Life Estate until then.

This was a few short years after I moved here. Then began the long permitting (environmental reports, etc.) and planning process. I attended many of the public meetings, which started in 2007, and provided my input, as well.   Construction finally began first on the perimeter trail last autumn, with heavy equipment working behind my house for months.

We looked forward to the promised opening at the beginning of February. Plans were made for a huge celebration and official opening.

On the evening of January 31 of this year, Walter Cottle Lester died.

On the morning of February 1st, the official opening of the perimeter trail abruptly became a hasty memorial as well, as the very first public access to the park opened: About half of the Perimeter Trail (I think it's about 1.8 miles of trail).  Sadly, I was off doing dog agility that weekend and didn't attend.

I think that Walter might have held on until he could really see that his mother's and his sister's and his vision had become a reality.

Anyway, back to us.

We've been out walking around fairly often, and [sigh] picking up litter and occasional abandoned poops. Then, last week, I decided to make a blog about it.

Check out my Martial Cottle Park Naughty Neighbor Patrol blog. Main goal is to track what I'm picking up (and there are others, probably staff, also picking up), but as long as I'm out, might as well throw in some photos and commentary.

Happy 9th Birthday, Boost!

SUMMARY: Well... actually January 31.

I didn't post here--but I did post on Facebook.

Still, just so she doesn't feel left out, here's a new picture for today.

Happy 13th Birthday, Tika!

SUMMARY: My Valentine's Day girlie.

2002	2003
2004	2005
2006	2007
2008	2009
2010	2011
2012	2013
2014

And just a few bonus shots from random years:

2003	2007
2008	2009
2012	2013
2013

Martial Cottle Park Perimeter Trail is Open!

SUMMARY: Our first walkies there

Backfill: Added May 15, 2020 because I was sure I had already done a post but apparently not. Don't know where it is. Maybe Facebook? Anyway--here you go--

Martial Cottle Park -- nearly 300 acres behind my house. I have been waiting for a decade and a half for it to open so that I could have a place to walk my dogs that's actually park-like, not neighborhood-like.

And of course now I'm in pain and Tika is old and struggling. But we went today anyway; I could hardly wait and felt good enough to go.

We walked across the top segment, left to right.
Branham on the right. Snell at the bottom.

Approaching the entrance in our neighborhood, past a neighbor's flowering tree.
Very excited, first time this is available to walk into.
And it looks great! Beautiful wood fences. Dog Poo station! How cool is that? 

Tika and Boost checking peemail.
Apparently there have been male dogs here prior to our visit. Heh.  

It is a park. There are rules.
Boost, being a Border Collie, read them and she said that we're good.

Riprap just inside the entry, in front of big gates into the agricultural area that will be leased to an organic farming company. 
This is part of the swale all along the path that might be flooded during rainfall.

Some neighbors wanted much, much more space between the trail and their back fences.
I think this is more than enough. And I, too, live in a house whose back yard faces the park.

All of this area will be landscaped. So much work that they still have to do, so we can't walk on the dirt.
Who wants to walk on dirt anyway, when we have such a nice path?

Wonderful path! The property is flat and square, but who wants another straight-away to walk down? I love the meandering, and the dotted line for people going in different directions. 
You can see how they've just finished plowing out the swale to catch rainwater and replenish the groundwater.

And the view of the mountains looking south! Mount Chual at the left; Loma Prieta next to it with radio towers (epicenter of 1989 Loma Prieta quake is under the far side of that); on the right Mount Umunhum but this photo doesn't show the radar tower. 

Caution: Congested Area.  ... Well, maybe someday...
(Looking north towards Branham.)

Now we exit the gate at the right side of the map (north actually). There's poo bags here, too. Yay! So thoughtful!

Looking back at the entrance on Branham. Such nice fencing!
And a brand new sidewalk, with an elevated side wall for people to rest on briefly if their sciatica is so bad that they need a long rest after a short walk. Not that I'd know about that.

Movies Viewed 2010-2013

SUMMARY: One of my hobbies

(Updates after original post are in blue.)

I've been meaning to do this every year for many years, but somehow don't get around to it.

Thought of it just now, so here are the lists of movies I saw in theaters from 2010-2013. FWIW.

(I have several movies noted as "?" which means that, for example, I have a receipt for popcorn but no ticket stub to match that date. I saw some films that aren't on the list, so I think those must be the ??s. On the other hand, quite a few of these I had to look up on IMDB as I couldn't remember what they were about, and even had to watch the trailers for some to remind me.)

Listed in approximately the order in which I saw them.

*(nn)* were nominated for the Academy Awards best picture & for which year.

2010 (35 films)
------------------------------------
?? (can't find ticket, don't remember)
Blind Side
Crazy HEart
Tooth Fairy
Shutter Island
Ghost Writer
???another one I didn't note--likely Alice in Wonderland (w/Johnny Depp)
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
How to Train Your Dragon
Iron Man 2
Robin Hood
Oceans
*(10)* Toy Story 3D
Prince of Persia
Despicable Me
*(10)* The Kids are All Right
*(10)* ???another no note -- likely was ** Inception
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
??another no note
Heartbreaker
The Town
*(10)*The SOcial Network
Let Me In
It's Kind of Funny
Red
Hereafter
Megamind
Fair Game
Tangled 3-D
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
Morning Glory
Tron Legacy
*(10)* The Fighter
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The King's Speech

(Other *(10)* nominees I didn't see: 127 Hours, Black Swan, Winter's Bone)


2011 (30 films)
------------------------------------
Rabbit Hole
*(10)* True Grit
Green Hornet
Tangled
Unknown
Jane Eyre
Rango
?? didn't note
Le Compte D'Ory (Met. Opera in movie theater)
Water for Elephants
Thor
*(11)* ?? another unknown -- likely ** Midnight In Paris
Kung Fu Panda
?? no note
Cars
Green Lantern
Horrible Bosses
Cowboys & Aliens
Captain America: The First Avenger
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
The Debt
*(11)* The Help
*(11)* Moneyball
50/50
Tower Heist
J Edgar
*(11)* The Descendants
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
The Artist
Tinker Taylor Solider Spy

(Other *(11)* I didn't see: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Tree of Life)


2012 (33 films)
------------------------------------
My Week with Marilyn
*(11)* Hugo
"Missme 4-D" ?(can't read my writing)
The Adventures of TinTin
The Muppets
*(11)* War Horse
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Hunger Games
John Carter of Mars
Iron Lady
Mirror Mirror
The Avengers
The Avengers (again)
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Brave
The Amazing Spider-Man
Dark Knight trilogy (3 movies one night)
*(12)* Beasts of the Southern Wild
Hope Springs
Robot & Frank
Bourne Legacy
Looper
Cloud Atlas
Wreck It Ralph
Skyfall
*(12)* Lincoln
Flight
*(12)* Life of Pi
*(12)* Argo
*(12)* Silver Lining Playbook
Anna Karenina
The Hobbit
Hyde Park

(Other *(12)* nominations I didn't see: Django Unchained, Amour)

2013 (46 films)
------------------------------------
The Impossible
*(12)* Zero Dark Thirty
*(12)* Les Miserables
Quartet
Warm Bodies
Jack the Giant Killer
Side Effects
The Great and Powerful Oz
Olympus
42
Jurassic Park
Mud
Iron Man 3
The Great Gatsby
Star Trek Darkness
Man of Steel
White House Down
What Maisie Knew
Now You see Me
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Much Ado About Nothing
The Internship
Monsters U
The Wolverine
The Way Way Back
Despicable Me 2
We're The Millers
Lone Ranger
The Butler
Rush
Closed Circuit
??? no note
Museum Hours
*(13)* Gravity
*(13)* Captain Phillips
Catching Fire
Frozen
*(13)* 12 Years a Slave
Ender's Game
Thor Dark World
*(13)* Nebraska
*(13)* Philomena
Saving Mr. Banks
Hobbit Desolation
*(13)* American Hustle
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

2014 [only listing the nominees I've seen in January for completeness]
-----------------
*(13)* Her
*(13)* The Wolf of Wall Street
*(13)* Dallas Buyers Club

(Yay, I've seen all the 2013 nominees!)

Training or Not, Motivated or Not

SUMMARY: Musings after class night.

I find, on a day-to-day basis, that I am less than enthused about practicing agility, honing my skills, focusing on Boost's needs, doing the physical workouts that we need to do to be in optimal condition, and so on.

And then I get to class. And I am inspired by the lights and the colors and the enthusiasm and the thrills of doing the sometimes-challenging courses that come up, and I think:

Yes! I *DO* want to go home and:

• Do WINDSPRINTS every day so that I'm running at times other than on class night and on competition weekends.
• Work on SERPENTINE handling, all the little exercises that instructors have given us to improve, and doing them 100 times in all kinds of combinations, as advised, so that she and I both feel more comfortable with them.
• LEARN how to do that dang k-turn...  I have the examples and exercises from class, need to practice by myself and with a dog.
• RELEARN to do blind crosses--I did them instinctively when I first started classes in 1995, but they were trained out of me because you have to take your eye off your dog and that's a no-no.... but there are so many times when a front cross means a 270-degree turn (or more than 180 anyway), which is harder on my knees and back, especially considering that I'm really not that coordinated anyway.
• FOCUS on Boost doing jumps without knocking bars.
• REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT having Boost keep running on focusing on obstacles rather than on me.

And so on and so on.

And here it is, the following evening, and I'm thinking--it's cold, it's dark, it's been a heavy thinking day at work, I want to go to bed.

And so it goes. If only I could remember the feeling of wanting to do those things at times outside of class. Like back not too many years ago when I used to do a lot of practice with the dogs, full-bore, almost every day. 

Meanwhile, I think I'll check my emails and, probably, go to my nice warm bed again.

Sunrise in the Agility Yard

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday

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Fitbit

SUMMARY: Cool thing!

I won a fitbit in an agility friend's fitness participation raffle! It's the Fitbit Flex, and there's a lot about it that I like.

That's it, next to my big black watch. Did my friend pick the perfect teal color for me, or what?

It looks imposing here, but it's soft, light, and flexible, and I don't even notice that I'm wearing it. That's good, because I've been sleeping in it, and THAT's because it tracks how restless or awake I am during the night, and tells me how many hours I actually slept. Very cool.

It also tracks numbers of steps taken, minutes of very active movement, and floors climbed (a "floor" is another way of saying 10 feet gain in elevation). It translates that into miles walked and calories burned.  I can view the current daily numbers on the wristband display. Also, it connects to the fitbit web site, where my dashboard syncs with the wristband to get the current data and displays my goals, accomplishments, and so on. It apparently also can help you track food eaten; my friend uses hers for that, but I don't.

So far--after 5 days--I'm liking it. It has been much more accurate in step counting than the brand new pedometer that I bought a couple of months ago, which adds so many imaginary steps to my count that I really have no idea how much I've walked.

I don't much like the clasp, which is very hard to fasten. (Not that, not only do the online reviews almost all agree with me, but there are lots of complaints about people losing their fitbits because they pop open when they brush against things and the people didn't notice). I hope they change it in future versions.

The only time that it seems to have failed me is yesterday.

Yesterday morning I did the usual various things around the house, then drove in to my client site, walked through the parking garage and down a long corridor to a meeting, sat in the meeting for an hour with a little bit of getting up and moving around, walked back to my car, drove to my dentist's office, walked into the office to check in, walked back outside. At that point, it said that I had walked about 1.4 miles, or about 2800 steps. Perfectly reasonable.

Because I was early for the dentist, I went for a walk. Walked 35 minutes briskly without stopping, and at that point I hit 3 miles (6000 steps). So far so good.

Then I drove home, walked around the yard (not a big yard) to pick up poop, threw the toy for the dogs a few times and played a little tug, watered the potted plants along the back wall of the house. Fed the dogs dinner, drove out to the movie theater, parked at the far side of the parking lot (maybe a couple hundred feet from the theater entrance). Walked to the theater to check the line for the movie, walked back to my car to get my stuff. Back to the theater, sat on a chair in line for 45 minutes until my friend showed up.

Walked my stuff back to the car and rejoined my friend in line. Stood there talking for 15 minutes, then walked into the theater, which was right off the lobby. Got a seat, walked out to the lobby to buy food (no waiting in line), back into the theater, back out to the girls' room (across the hall from the theater door), back into the theater. After the movie, walked back out to my car, drove home. Walked into the house, greeted the dogs a bit and threw a toy for Boost, sat down.

Fitbit now said that I had walked 10,000 steps (5 miles) for the day. There is NO WAY that that minimal activity added up to two miles, if 35 minutes of very brisk walking was only 1.6 miles.

So maybe it does track bumpy road bounces. Dunno.  Dang California's crumbling freeways. Anyway, something to watch for and figure out so that I'm aware of what's going on.

But I love having the info on my computer, I love its general accuracy, how easy it is to view the data throughout the day on my wrist, how comfortable it is to wear. AND I've found that I know lots of other people with fitbits. You can become "fitbit friends", which means that  their weekly totals of steps taken are then displayed on your dashboard, nifty for cross-motivation and for pushing to make your goals.

My current goals--I'm starting low-ish--are to walk 5 miles a day (first 3 days I aimed at 3 miles, but I made that easily, so I upped it) and climb 20 stories (still pretty easy, but I'm still pretty out of shape).

Fitbit, I'm sure, will be glad to help me. It's already flirting with me: After I recharged it for the first time, it displayed "LOVEU." Isn't that sweet?

Context Is Everything

SUMMARY: Even newspaper-fetching dogs really don't generalize well

One thing that I've heard trainers say repeatedly through the years is that dogs do not generalize well. Maybe he sits perfectly every time you say "Sit" in the kitchen, but not when you move to the living room. So you practice in the living room and then he'll sit there or in the kitchen, but not when you go into the bedroom. So you practice there until he gets it, but he won't sit out on the back porch. So you practice all those places until he's good at it, but then he won't do it when out in the yard.  Then maybe he sits on command in the yard every morning when you got outside to practice, but not if the wind is blowing. Or the neighbor is using a leaf blower. Or you're wearing sunglasses and a hat. So you practice all these things, but then won't sit in the same place in the same yard after dark.

It's not surprising that he won't then sit on command when he goes to the park or into a stranger's house.

In agility, dogs might go over your PVC jumps with no problems, but the first time that they encounter solid wood-winged jumps at the Nationals, they don't know what to do. Or your weave poles are plain white, and the first time they encounter striped ones, they pop out left and right. (Or the poles are randomly striped. Or one leans slightly to the left.) Or the first time they run on dirt. Or the first time you go to a particular new site. Or when the judge wears a big floppy hat.

Dogs DO place an amazing emphasis on context; this is why you have to practice everything that's important to you everywhere every time under every circumstance that you can think of before you can claim that the dog really understands the command independent of the context in which it's uttered. (Oh, by the way, does you dog understand the command when someone else gives it?) As you do something a thousand, 2 thousand times in dozens of different places and circumstances, the dog gets better and better at generalizing -- meaning this human noise means the same thing no matter what the rest of the world looks, smells, or sounds like.

Which brings me to this.

Every morning for almost 9 years, Boost has gone out to the end of the driveway and brought in the newspaper. Rain or wind or shine; dark or light; plastic bags or uncovered paper; gigantic ad-filled sunday edition or 20-page Tuesday edition; at the very end of the driveway, up towards the cars, over under the shrub, closer to the sidewalk; squirrels or cats (a momentary distraction only); garbage trucks or neighbors (of some concern, but not too terrifying any more). Doesn't matter.

First thing in the morning, I let the dogs out back. Then, if I don't immediately go to the front door after she comes in, she sits in the front hall and waits for me. SOOOO predictable.

As I approach the front door, she's dancing and barking with excitement. I stand in the front doorway and send her with "Go get the newspaper!" and she blasts out of the house, down the steps, around the corner, down the driveway, finds the paper and comes happily back, carries the paper all the way into the kitchen, drops it on the dog bed next to my chair, and waits for her treat. Sometimes for various reasons I step all the way out on the porch as she heads down the driveway and close the door behind me. When she comes back with the paper, she holds it until I open the door and then proceeds as normal.

Boost DIVES for the paper, her rear feet in the air and her tail flying forward at the abrupt pounce!

She is perfect at it and she loves it.

Sure, we're out of town from time to time, so maybe 20 times a year she doesn't actually go out and get the newspaper, but over all, I calculate that she has done this about 3,100 times in her life.

The other morning, for the first time in many years, I got dressed and took the dogs for a walk immediately after I got up--no breakfast, no newspaper fetch.  On the way home from the walk, as we arrived at our driveway, the paper was still sitting there. I unclipped her leash and said, "Get the newspaper!" Mass confusion--she darted this way and that, trying to figure out what it was that I wanted her to do or get.

So I called her back to me and we walked to the top of the driveway near the house, and I again said, "Get the newspaper!" I tried not to laugh--she was SO eager to get SOMETHING but she just simply did not understand WHAT I was asking. She headed towards the paper a couple of times and then veered away again, bouncing back and forth in that frenzied demonstration of "come on come on come on me want job me want do job ME NOT UNDERSTAND JOB!"

I repeated the command several times and finally she saw paper, identified paper, picked up paper, ran up steps toward door--dropped paper halfway there and waited for me to open the door and let her in. The paper stayed on the front step.

 I knew immediately what had happened: We had practiced doing this 3,100 times with exactly the same situation: She's in the house, I step out through the door, then I send her from there. No wonder she does *that* perfectly. But we've never practiced sending her from other places at other times of the day or with me in different locations.

Dog brains are so strange. Good thing they're cute.